islandmon

Anytime speciality stairs are required it's best to avoid the limitations of the functional stair PIO and go straight to the NURBS. Either extrude the tread deisgn along the stair path or create individual treads and planes in 3D space. have fun ... experiment. eja

FYI, The v11.5 CD arrived. I used it to do a total clean install. My first project was a typical survey DWG import which I've done hundreds of times before from same Surveyor source. 1/2 acre parcel some topo lines and text...no big deal. Within 30 minutes VW crashed. Re-launch-re-open file > zoom tool>crash: export file to VSS >import with DEBUG active > problem with text line spacing. Look at the code & discover that the 12pt text had 12pt line spacing..ditto for 18pt @18, etc. Standard text stuff ... then noticed that after the crash my text size default was set to some huge 'unlisted' font size for the parking spaces PIO . Took down the app. NEVER had this type of problem with past DWG imports. The export to Vectorscript allowed my to analyze this problem , locate ,and correct the offending issues. eja

Oops! Compare your Plug-ins from v11.01 with those from 11.5. Note the differences. You may have to mix & match to recover the functionality. Just a thought... eja

Great presentation Jan15 ..you're a natural teacher ! My 2 cents: > ACAD has always had issues with scaling , ie using modulo 10 instead of mod12 for scale 1/4"=1'. therefore off my 120%. >VW makes getting all the scales & dimensions correct easy. Use both 2d Loci & 3d Loci to keep them registered across multiple layers. >Black screen programming sucks. It's a relic long past it's utility. When was the last time you printed or plotted on Black Paper with magenta ink ? >VW is without equal when it comes to scaling options and functionality. Welcome aboard ! ejarmstrong , User since Day Uno

Creating a separate 'S-Beam' layer for each floor allows the use of the Wall Tool combined with Objects to create the beams & headers without conflicting with the walls. These layers can then be share as links with S-Columns & S-Walls and turned on and off in Viewports. This avoids using Class Attributes to define critical path Structural Members. Ideally, Class Attributes should only be used as declarations on the components of Structure. For example, line weights & hatch fills & textures. eja

You can also get an older version of Minicad6 and use the DTM from there like I used to do : ) However, the DTM integration in Architect is impeccable and well worth the investment ! eja

Do you have the landmark &/or Architect install? If yes then use DTM 3d Loci to create a poly & NURB surface. Then use can use a 3d poly as a Site-Modifier...works great...fun and easy...roads as well...(a bit more challenging).

Working Planes may be the answer here. Symbols built on the working plane are supposed to stay there..otherwise there would be total chaos in the world as we know it. The Milky Way Galaxy is built on a unique working plane and stays put even though the Universe keeps expanding !

This may be why EFI controls the color printing algorithms. Normally the printer drivers deal with these issues. As noted by Delmer, Color Space declaration seems to be the issue. Apple Provides a free 'Digital Color Meter' and with it you can get all the different values for all the different Spaces. VW v11.5 upgraded the color palette to OSX colorsync specs. islandmon

I really enjoy these 'chicken vs egg' scenarios. One learns so much . Prior to 1990 it was virtually impossible to Import anything from anywhere ! We've come a long way ; > ) Usually I ask for files generated by version -2 in order to avoid similar issues. Regardless of the originating program. islandmon

Carch, >export the file as a vectorscript >import the vectorscript '.text' file into a new empty file >what does the compiler 'errors' have to say ? http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=12;t=004748

If you want to draw get a drawing program. If you want to do CAD get a CAD program. The former is about pixels , the later is about vectors. The benefit of VW is that it makes a sterling effort at a combination of the two approachs. Place some objects and see them render then export as images...very kool. I'm amazed at the tone of a couple of the responses to my suggestion to run a little test on a file or two. As an experienced professional user, I can assure everybody that the problem is not in something I have done improperly ( perhaps I've pushed the envelope ). I've generated the same exact errors on a file with one object as a grouped symbol. This is not about the vectorscript compiler. it about the file corruptions, kernel panics , memory addressing and crashes. The challenge of vectorscript is that it's a powerful advantage and open sources the program. If there are any problems with the VW, et al., then these boards act as an 'early warning system' as well as educational tutorials. Hopefully everything will continue to work out for the best... 'No harm no foul' regards, ejarmstrong

Clarification: I use Vectorscript processing as a valuable 'diagnostic tool'. >export to Vectorscript ( Text Format) >open the text file in a text editor >below the 'Procedure' >add {$DEBUG} ____ Procedure LoadFile; {$DEBUG} VAR ______ >save >import the file into Vectorworks The Debugger will run and step thru the code identifying any anomalies. Simple... This is NOT rocket science ! It is simply a way to see if there are any truncations in the script text file which relate to the weird behavior of objects in your file. As a heavily invested Professional USER since Day Uno, I really cannot afford to waste time with any of these issues. Keep in mind that I identified this situation with v9 and kept my shut about it. Except to inform techsupport. Now I've reached the point where my work flow has come to a grinding halt. Recently one of my premiere projects refused to acknowledge OpenGL and crashed the app. Vectorscript identified massive truncations of the 'SetVectorFill'. The result is history. I'm working to find a way out of this dilemma. Including referring to other C++ developments teams who may have resolved this problem. Why should VW developers have to re-invent the wheel if the tools already exist ? Today is Friday and I have a long weekend ahead recovering ALL my current project files layer by layer. My office is weeks behind schedule. I do not get any satisfaction from this grotesque expenditure of valuable time & resources. If Adobe had a CAD module , I would be in hog heaven ; > ) regards, ejarmstrong ___________ My comment about Vectorworks not be a 'drawing program' is true. The first thing I teach my students is NOT to draw but to program inputs for the parameters then let VW do the computational work. A drawing approach is inefficient and results in unnecessary artifacts and overhead. A simple example is the use of the circle tool to draw a 'relative' circle. Rather than double click and program in the exact location and radius required. Eventually all that relativity adds up. __________________

Please take a few minutes to study these wonderful pages provided my Tensegrity Master Kenneth Nelson. They outline the basics of the rope tetra-fractals. http://www.kennethsnelson.net/new_structure/structure1.htm regards, eja

Let me make my point perfectly clear on this issue. As a User since Minicad v1, and also Photoshop v1, Filemaker v1 and many other apps including MS products. Vectorworks has evolved into the most unstable app. I've ever used ! Also, it is the only program in recent memory that manages to eat it's own unprotected file structure ! The short 'laundry list' from Alanmac is just the tip of the berg. Read "Death of Vectorworks ?" and run the vectorscript export & import tests. Watch your hard work decompose into chaos from layer to layer, wall to wall, symbol to symbol and file to file. There's no end to this madness. VectorWorks corrupts the memory addressing and then pages out the corruption to the disk. Each time you load and save the corrupted addressing becomes more severely outta whack with your intented CAD reality. Look, the reason that I'm not doing my beloved CAD Architectural work for my high-end clientel, and instead spending inordinate amounts of time writing to this techboard and responding to emails is because ALL my current project files are corrupted !!!! Even after I totally decomposed them and rebuilt the files layer by layer from tested and clean objects , within a matter of loads & saves the issues started to reappear. This has been the case across ALL my different hardware & systems configurations running different versions of VW on different OS. It's not you and it's not me ... it's not Photoshop nor Filemaker. Microsoft Word, nor X Plane ... It's not OSX. There is definitely a MAJOR problem lurking at the very heart of Vectorworks. It maybe instructive to read what Austin Meyer, Genius dev of X Plane, had to say about coding with C++: X-Plane 7 is written with ARRAYS AND PROCEDURES. Now X-Plane 8 is written largely with VECTORS AND OBJECTS. What's the difference? X-Plane's language, C++, stores all sorts of data in ARRAYS... lists of numbers that contain data. For example: the lift of an airfoil... the lift is recorded for each of 3,600 possible angles of attack _one-tenth degree increments for each of the 360 possible degrees angle of attack, with math to interpolate in between. But here is the problem: What is X-Plane thinks that the impossible case of 361 degrees angle of attack exsists? Then it will look for the 3610'th index in an array with only 3600 indices. What happens then? NOBBODY KNOWS. Maybe a computer crash. Maybe a bad flight-model. Maybe nothing. When you go past the maximum allowable array range, all bets are off: the memory of your computer could be scrambled who-knows-where and result in a computer crash right at that nano-second, or maybe two hours later. This is the achilles heel of the C+ language, and has been for decades: Going out of array bounds can crash your computer... and you never know how much later the computer will crash, making it near-impossible to tell where the problem really is, thus making the problem near-impossible to solve. Enter Ben Supnik, algorythms expert, who shows me how to use VECTORS. Vectors are just like arrays, but with one major difference: WHEN RUNNING X-PLANE WITH MY COMPILER WATCHING THE CODE, THE PROGRAM WILL STOP THE VERY NANOSECOND ANY PART OF THE SIM TRYS TO SO MUCH AS =>LOOK<= OUT OF BOUNDS, IMMEDIATELY showing me the problem. This means the achilles heel of C++ is finally armored: any out-of-bounds access is immediatley seen and solved... there are no "skeletons in the closet" that went out of bounds without me knowing about it. If the program SEEMS to be running fine, then it really IS running fine. That is priceless, and is of course integrated into X-Plane 8.00. As well, UNLIKE arrays, VECTORS can be re-set on-the-fly to ANY SIZE, WITH NO LIMITS EXCEPT THE MEMORY OF YOUR COMPUTER. What does this mean to us? It means that Ben Supnik can design scenery with as many polygons as he likes... NO LIMITS. Robin Peel can give as as many airports, NAVAIDS, airways, and fixes as he likes... NO LIMITS. Sergio can give us as many objects as he can build... NO LIMITS. You can design 3-D cockpits with the new 3-D cockpit technology with as much detail as you can imagine... NO LIMITS. The other major internal change is I have gone from PROCEDURES to OBJECTS. What does this mean? Procedures are the pieces of code that manipulate all the data in the sim. The other achilles heel of C++ has always been that you can work on a procedure to get it to manage data just PERFECTLY for a YEAR, and think you have achieved Nirvana, ONLY TO HAVE ALL YOUR WORK LOST BECAUSE SOME =>OTHER<= PROCEDURE IS MESSING UP THE DATA YOU WORKED SO HARD TO PERFECT! Say, for exmaple, I think my lift-finding procedure has found the perfect lift for an airplane... what good does it do when some OTHER procedure is _accidentally_ MESSING UP THE LIFT DATA? WE get garbage in the flight model, and that ruins everything. The solution is OBJECTS, and here is how it works: Each OBJECT is a procedure that HIDES IT'S DATA INSIDE ITSELF SO NO OTHER PROCEDURE CAN SEE IT! COOL! This way, once I get a procedure to FIND the perfect lift coefficient, we get to KEEP it... no other procedure can mess it up! AWESOME! THis is done in X-Plane version 8.00 as well. _________________ That about sums up my thoughts for VectorWorks... regards, ejarmstrong G5, 1gb OSX.3.8, VW/Architect 11.5 Please pardon the following extensive post:

All geodesic trajectories are composed of tetra-fractals. For example the most efficient way to create a spheric is with with 60+ & 60- tetra-fractals. A single fractal can 'contain' all the characteristics and also be scalable. A rope can be decomposed into an combination of 1+ & 1- fractals . A single strand is a series of self-similar fractals. NURBS is ideal for working with symbolic fractal structures. Allowing for both surface and solid forms. The benefit of this approach is that it doesn't require complex scripting... just a command of the available VW 3d toolkit. Here's a stereo 'cross-eye' example of a simple geodesic, view by creating a 3rd middle image: Stereo view of LCD Fractal geodesic I'll post a spheric tutorial later ( a possibly do a fractal rope example ). eja

If using a Mac try printing 'save as' pdf. You can also use a screen capture. To avoid prolonged 'redrawing time. I often just use a screen capture from my Cinema display 1680x1050. Takes 10sec versus 20minutes to re-render . Also using the zoom in VW sets up the view perfectly prior to capture. Try export images from the ViewPort.

here's anoher little trick. Make the overhang value = .01. ( a value of '0.0' is not allowed ) This creates 'generic' rafters to be used and modified as required. Very Kool , use 'show line' to place & join , etc. Framing by itself is not so adaptable but each of the elements is powerful. The only real limitation is that the lower 'BottomPeak' at the rafter diagonal end only allows of a single vertex instead of 2, wierd.

Travis, Take a typ file; >copy & paste one layer to new file >export to vss >import into new file do this with each layer in the drawing. Sobering ! Even discoverying that the compiler just doesn't recognize various parameters like 'WallBottomPeak' causing the import to fail. Jim, Thanx for the archoncad link . Trying to download the 200k pdf but so far no luck. eja

May I suggest exporting the file to Vectorscript and then import into a new file. Are there any error messages? I have a G5 w. OSX10.3.8 and discovered that the network can play a role in 'over all' the speed. eja

That's a biggee because it also violates the copyright ! And if you're use OSX it violates the protocols of the OS. Imagine if this was to have across a network of Users. eja

How's the Font mapping? Did you set it up to re-map all those cute little fonts into a generic font like Arial ? eja

Travis, The file may be DOA ( Dead On Arrival ) there's nothing short of manually recoding that can save parts of it. although, the integrity will be compromised. If the entire VW community began testing , they will discover that these issues are endemic. As for the use of a standard template file as you've 'logically' done with all the classes, layers, symbols, etc., I've tried that approach and it is definitely the road to ruin ! It magnifies the corruptions while infecting the new files like a virus. As a User since Minicad v1 I have a huge investment to protect here, and the discovery of this C++ bug is devastating to my business to the point that I'm considering leaving Architectural Design & Engineering and moving to the construction side. I really don't know if I want to 're-invent' myself again with some other CAD Program which probably has similar issues. Try this little procedure: >create a simple file with a couple walls, shapes, symbols, PIO , etc. >Export to Vectorscript >Import in new VW file and Export again to a new file name do this several times in sequence. Renaming the vss eachtime. >Open BBedit or other text editor >Compare the scripts' text line by line You will discover that the last 2 digits ( decimal places 14&15) of the x,y, z coordinates randomly change. ie; 2.000000000000014 > 2.000000000000028 Also , each import will be different in some weird way. The file may also become 'randomly' corrupted and generate 'error messages' upon import. This , I think , can be connected to the C++ leakage issue. Let me know how it goes... I'm working on an Applescript to try to clean the vss of these errors before they can trash the file structure. ejarmstrong

Or just create a single NURB tetrahedra-fractal symbol with the outer surface & inner solid texture mapped . Then duplicate and rotate and stack to your hearts content. It's the most efficient way to create geodesics. Also you can create a logarithmic sphiral using this simple process. eja

Travis, Items 1&2 are correct ( for now : > ). However, if you continue working with the same file , adding haches, classes & wall, etc., and save it often , there's a high probability that 'SetVectorFill will it fact become truncated and there by eventually corrupting the entire file structure making it unuseable ! 'objectHandle' links the hatchName:string to the Hatch. eja